Blood there was, and plenty.

She drank her drink and sat to think. Around her, revelry. Deviltry, she thought, and sought succour in her glass.

Sucker, she thought. Foolish head, foolish heart. Sucker.

A draft she took, a sip and more, her lip stinging, sore. A tooth loose, she thought and probed it lightly with a fingernail. Slightly loose.

She had fought like a demon, like a warrior in such a fight to put the mightiest foe to flight....

Angle of approach. There's a right way and a wrong way to land a plane. No. There is a right way and a million wrong ways. A million ways to crash, to be injured, to injure others, to die and to kill. To hurt or survive. Such a shallow ambition, such a shallow alternative. But there is a right way. Get the flaps right, the speed right, the attitude ...

Adopting a stance. Head up, back straight, that's fine for most occasions. Perhaps not when walking a tightrope. Perhaps not when...

There has to be more to life than how much pain you can give and how much pain you can take. There has to be more to love than how soon it can turn to hate. There must be.

Or is indignation the base line.

Everything above that line is an optional extra while everything below is included in the deal.

My car's windscreen wipers come on when the windscreen gets wet. I don't have to switch them on. It made me smile the first time I saw it work. Now it's...

I have trouble with remembering what date things happened on. The obvious ones - anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas - give me little bother, but the ones you don't know are going to become anniversaries put up a fight.

The second of July was the day the idea germinated.

It was her birthday, you see, so it coincided. It was the tail-end of our relationship, anyway, so the fight we'd had over her birthday dinner had probably come from tension. The fight in the car was...

She isn't feeling quite herself. A fight. Her father and her mother this time, not us. She'd cried and you'd - I'd, let's keep this real enough - tried to comfort her some way. Some words worked, some didn't. The status quo remained and she kept right on crying.

She didn't exactly throw me out, she'd never be so abrupt, but she did make it clear that the next tears would have to be shed in private, so I left her on the bed and wondered if that was what she really wanted, what...